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- A House committee released new evidence that Trump officials interfered with the US’s COVID response.
- Weakened CDC testing guidelines and blocked CDC briefings were among the committee’s findings.
- The report also said Trump “neglected the pandemic response” to “promote the Big Lie” of a stolen election.
A new report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform — the main investigative body of the House of Representatives — found that the Trump administration undermined the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response for political purposes.
The report, first written about by CNN and conducted under the auspices of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, includes numerous findings that have already been released this year. But the report also includes new evidence of what the committee called “deliberate efforts to undermine the nation’s coronavirus response for political purposes.”
“The Select Subcommittee also uncovered evidence showing that Trump White House officials neglected the pandemic response to focus on the 2020 presidential election and promote the Big Lie that the election results were fraudulent,” the report read.
Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under Trump, wrote in an email released by the committee that she would be skipping a meeting that included many proponents of a “herd immunity” response to the pandemic.
“I can’t be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity,” Birx wrote in an August 2020 email to Marc Short, then the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. “They are a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience.”
According to the report, the Trump administration also weakened COVID-19 testing guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while also blocking media briefings by the public health agency.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
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